Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Granite 4.2 3B vs MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B
MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Granite 4.2 3B's 59.8 (C), and leads in 0 of 4 scored categories. Granite 4.2 3B leads on agent interface and documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.
Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6359 open weights comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Agents on small hardware that want a permissive reasoning model for tool calls and coding, with thinking they can switch off
Ahead on
- Agent interface, 85 against 70
- Documentation and upkeep, 92 against 48
Watch for
No safety results published for 4.2, and only general safety cautions
Best for Agents that need a cheap local model to read screenshots, photos and short video on a phone, a laptop or beside a bigger model
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
No limitations section, safety results, agent-use guidance or security contact
Why the edge
Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.
Documentation and upkeep Granite 4.2 3B +44
Granite 4.2 3B 92
The card covers everything but a knowledge cut-off (17). IBM's disclosure lists the datasets with sources and sizes (20). The index file changed on 20 October 2026, 15 days before this check, and nothing in IBM's 4.2 repositories or the GitHub repository changed since (20). The two questions asked on IBM's 3B repositories have an IBM reply, and no new thread was opened after 21 October (20). Granite 4.1 3B stays in its own repository with no note (5), and the files agree with each other (10).
MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B 48
Model card 8, Intended use (image, multi-image and video understanding on device), architecture (early visual-token compression inside the vision encoder) and parameters (1B) are there. Training data 0, no description of the training data on the card. Last change 20, the last commit, on 30 October 2026, updated the card and removed an unused asset folder, eleven days before this check. Responsiveness 0, the repository has no discussions that aren't pull requests (two pull requests in all), so nobody has asked anything yet and the line reads as none answered, as settled in calibration. Version policy 10, MiniCPM-V 4.5 and 4.6 stay in their own repositories and the GitHub README dates each release. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the architecture and the thinking switch, and no report waits without a reply, since there are no discussions. 8 + 0 + 20 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 48.
Agent interface Granite 4.2 3B +15
Granite 4.2 3B 85
The template ships in the repository (20). The card shows how tools are declared and how calls come back, and names qwen3_coder for vLLM and SGLang (25). The template renders several calls in a turn (20). JSON output isn't documented for 4.2 (0). Thinking turns off or goes to low effort per request, with the reasoning returned apart in SGLang (10), and 131,072 tokens are native (10).
MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B 70
Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository, 7,249 characters. Tool-calling format 10, the card shows tools declared in the OpenAI tools array in a request to Transformers' server, but not how a call comes back, and names no parser for vLLM or SGLang. Trained tool calling 20, the template loops over tool_calls, so it renders several calls in one assistant turn, and the card gives a tool-calling request as a supported use. Structured output 0, Neither JSON nor JSON Schema output is documented or claimed for the model on the card. Reasoning control 10, the card passes enable_thinking per request in its examples, the template has been off by default since 19 October 2026, and the GGUF repository keeps thinking builds in their own folder. Context 10, 262,144 tokens, max_position_embeddings in the text config. 20 + 10 + 20 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 70.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Granite 4.2 3B | MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 95 | 95 | even |
| Risk | 20%20 | 55 | 55 | even |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 85 | 70 | Granite 4.2 3B +15 |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 92 | 48 | Granite 4.2 3B +44 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 59.8/100 | C 61/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Granite 4.2 3B | MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | IBM | OpenBMB |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-20 | 2026-10-30 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | 3.8/5 (4) | none |
Verdicts
Granite 4.2 3B
A small reasoning model for tool calls, coding and multilingual chat, published by IBM under plain Apache 2.0 with signed files and a dataset disclosure, and run by llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers from a 2.2 GB Ollama build. Thinking turns off or shortens per request. It has no published safety results and no documented JSON mode.
MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B
A vision-language cousin small enough for a phone, under plain Apache 2.0, that every runtime we count can load. The projector is bigger than the language model, so plan for about 2 GB. The card says nothing about limits or training data and doesn't show how a tool call comes back.
Before you call either
Granite 4.2 3B
- Start it with
ollama run granite4.2:3b; set options.num_ctx in the request, since Ollama's default context is short and the model takes up to 131,072 - With vLLM 0.32.0 or later, serve
ibm-granite/granite-4.2-3bwith--reasoning-parser granite_thinking_parser --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder --enable-auto-tool-choice; that release has the parser built in, so the card's--reasoning-parser-plugin ./granite_thinking_parser.pyisn't needed - With SGLang 0.5.18 or later,
--reasoning-parser auto --tool-call-parser autoresolve to IBM's recommended parsers, and the reasoning comes back in reasoning_content - Use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 for every mode, as IBM requires
- Pass
enable_thinkingfalse for direct answers orlow_efforttrue for short reasoning, through chat_template_kwargs on an OpenAI-compatible server - Earlier turns' thinking is stripped by default (
truncate_history_thinking), so pass it false to keep reasoning in multi-turn history - For JSON, use the runtime's guided decoding, since IBM documents no JSON mode for 4.2
- Verify the files with
python -m model_signing verify sigstoreand IBM's identity, per IBM's signature guide
MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B
- Start it with
llama-server -hf openbmb/MiniCPM-V-4.7-1B-gguf:Q4_K_M --jinja, orollama run openbmb/minicpm-v4.7:1b - For image input in llama.cpp add
mmproj-model-f16.gguf, or the smaller 4x projector - The GGUF files at the repository root have thinking off. Use the files in
thinking/when you want the trace - Use temperature 0.7, top_p 0.95 and top_k 100 in instruct mode, as the card recommends
- Check tool calls in your runtime first, since the card names no parser
- Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Granite 4.2 3B or MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B?
MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Granite 4.2 3B's 59.8 (C), and leads in 0 of 4 scored categories. Granite 4.2 3B leads on agent interface and documentation and upkeep.
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Machine-readable
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/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-minicpm-v-4-7-1b.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/granite-4-2-3b.json·/api/v1/tools/minicpm-v-4-7-1b.json - From a terminal
anchor compare granite-4-2-3b minicpm-v-4-7-1b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "granite-4-2-3b", "b": "minicpm-v-4-7-1b"}at/mcp, no key